Speaker Bios

Michael Bykhovsky founded Applied Financial Technologies (AFT) in 1996, which was acquired in 2007 by Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), now Lender Processing Services (LPS). Prior to starting his own company, he worked at Fisher, Francis, Trees & Watts as Director of Portfolio Technology and developed a complete fixed-income analytical system for the company. He joined FFTW after two years at Hyperion Capital Management, where he was a Vice President in charge of Quantitative Research. There, he headed a team that developed a wide range of analytical systems that focused on mortgages and mortgage derivatives and the risks imbedded in them, as well as other interest rate sensitive instruments. Before moving to Hyperion Capital Management, Bykhovsky headed a risk control group at ABN-AMRO, and prior to that he was a Vice President in the Mortgage Research Group at Prudential Securities. Bykhovsky holds a B.S. in physics from Columbia University and an M.S. in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He then pursued his Ph.D. in physics at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and at Columbia University.

Brad Case, Ph.D., CAIA is Senior Vice President, Research & Industry Information for the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT). At NAREIT Dr. Case conducts research into all aspects of the investment performance of publicly traded REITs and other ways of investing in the income-producing real estate asset class including returns, volatilities, risk-adjusted returns, correlations, asset allocation, inflation hedging, and business model characteristics that are associated with performance differences. Dr. Case has been researching residential and commercial property markets for 23 years; prior to joining NAREIT he worked with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on the design of capital standards to protect against destabilizing losses in residential and commercial mortgage portfolios. His academic research has been published in top-quality academic journals; he has also written numerous articles for newspapers and magazines directed toward investors and investment advisors, and he blogs regularly on commercial real estate investment at www.seekingalpha.com and other online venues. Dr. Case earned his undergraduate degree from Williams College, a graduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.

John Chiang was first elected in November 2006 to serve as Controller of the State of California, the eight-largest economy in the world. He was elected to serve a second term in November 2010.

Since taking office in January 2007, Controller Chiang took immediate action to make the State’s finances more transparent and accountable to the public and to weed out waste, fraud and abuse of public funds.

He has led efforts to reform the State’s public pension systems, helped local governments navigate difficult economic times, protected California’s precious natural resources, returned more than $1 billion in unclaimed property to the rightful owners, and launched financial and tax assistance seminars for California’s working families, seniors, small businesses and non-profit organizations.

The Controller’s aggressive audits have in identified $2.4 billion in taxpayer dollars that were denied, overpaid, subject to collection, or resulted in revenues, savings and cost avoidance.

As the State’s chief fiscal officer, Chiang brings extensive experience and fiscal leadership to the State Controller’s Office. Chiang was first elected to the Board of Equalization in 1998 where he served two terms, including three years as chair. He began his career as a tax law specialist with the Internal Revenue Service and previously served as an attorney in the State Controller’s Office.

The son of immigrant parents, Chiang graduated with honors from the University of South Florida with a degree in Finance. He received his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Dr. Edelstein joined the University of California at Berkeley in 1985 and is active in the fields of real estate economics, finance, and property taxation; energy and environmental economics; public finance; and urban financial problems. He is a prodigious researcher and writer with work that addresses the major issues facing the real estate industry today. He has been published widely in prestigious economics and business journals on such topics as residential financial analysis and residential real estate markets. He has testified before the United States Congress on many issues including the viability of variable rate mortgages for savings and loan associations, the fiscal soundness of the V.A. Revolving Loan program, the determinants of the loan size limits for the FHA Single-Family Loan Program, the restructuring of the FHA Multi-Family Loan Program, the imposition of capital requirements on FNMA and FHLMC, and the impact of the Rodash decision upon the housing finance system. Dr. Edelstein received a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Mr. Giller has worked in the real estate private equity sector for over 25 years and has closed real estate transactions totaling approximately $4 billion. His experience includes the acquisition, asset management, structuring, financing, underwriting, pricing, or closing of transactions in the U.S., the UK, Western Europe, Mexico, and Asia. During his career, Mr. Giller has led transactions to acquire or finance partnership interests in funds, individual properties, large portfolios, and real estate operating companies in the real estate private equity, distressed commercial mortgage, and commercial real estate mortgage backed securities markets.

Prior to forming Clairvue Capital Partners, Mr. Giller was a Managing Principal and the Chief Investment Officer of Liquid Realty Partners, where he played a key role in sourcing, acquiring and managing real estate private equity fund secondary investments for Liquid Realty’s funds. Prior to joining Liquid Realty Partners, Mr. Giller held senior positions in or formed various real estate private equity investment firms. From 1993 until 2000 Mr. Giller was with JER Partners, a leading global real estate opportunity fund manager. In addition to focusing on acquiring distressed debt portfolio acquisitions and properties in the U.S., Mr. Giller served as Managing Director of JER France, SA, where he started and was responsible for building and running JER’s European investment platform. After leaving JER in 2000, Mr. Giller became a founding partner of real estate fund managers Towbes Capital Partners and Somera Realty Value Fund Advisors. Mr. Giller began his career as an acquisitions analyst and associate at Metric Realty Advisors (the predecessor to Blackrock Realty Advisors), investing on a separate account basis for pension plan sponsors such as CalPERS, and the Alaska Permanent Fund.

Mr. Giller earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and his Masters in Business Administration from the University of Virginia. He has been a member of the Pension Real Estate Association, the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate, ULI and a founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of American Riviera Bank, where he now serves as a Director Emeritus. Mr. Giller is a frequent lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley Haas Graduate Business School and a speaker at prominent industry conferences including ULI, PERE, IMN, SuperInvestor and IREI events.

Dr. Cynthia Kroll is the senior regional economist and executive director for staff research for the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, a research center on the U.C. Berkeley Campus. She holds masters and doctoral degrees from U.C. Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning. She is well known for her research on California economic trends and their implications for real estate development opportunities and land development issues.

Her recent and ongoing research span a broad range of topics and disciplines, including industrial structure, innovation, and financing building in the green economy; the global position of California’s economy in general and of high tech sectors; effects of global trade on services sectors; globalization and the real estate industry; the transforming housing market and California's future; affordable housing policy in California; the effects of the credit crisis on California's economy and public sector revenues; state and national responses to the housing and credit crisis; international tourism and real estate; human capital in the San Francisco Bay Area; and Bay Area firm births, deaths and relocations through the dot-com boom and bust. Earlier topics include: The role of the World Wide Web and other new technologies in the real estate industry, California’s economic outlook after the dot-com bubble, the effects of construction defect litigation on multifamily and condominium construction, an evaluation of the CEDAR (economic recovery) web site, the Bay Area housing market, the role of tourism in California’s economy, the effects of defense cuts on California employment and economic structure, the future of the Southern California economy, the effects of high housing prices on job growth, the effects of the Loma Prieta earthquake on the Bay Area economy, trends in California's Central Valley, housing cap proposals in San Diego, and the role of high tech industries in the Silicon Valley industrial market. Dr. Kroll conducts ongoing evaluations of California's residential, office and industrial markets. In addition to her twenty-six years at the Center, Dr. Kroll has also worked for the State of California's Office of Economic Research, for the Association of Bay Area Governments, for SRI International, as an adjunct lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of City and Regional Planning, and as an independent consultant. She has acted as an economic advisor to the California State Controller's Office, the Bay Area Economic Institute, and the California Economic Strategy Panel, and has served on the Editorial Board of the Bay Area Economic Pulse.

GU Krueger is principal economist and founder of HousingEcon.com, Inc. He works on all aspects of market research, including feasibility studies, forecasts of prices and foreclosures, and the analysis of local and regional economies. Before founding HousingEcon.com, Inc., GU Krueger was a Senior Vice President at IHP Capital Partners, where he managed and coordinated all aspects of market research for IHP from project based analysis to strategic planning.

Prior to joining IHP, GU was Deputy Chief Economist with the California Association of Realtors. He also worked as an industry economist for the Conference Board in New York City. GU has served in an economic advisory role for the Los Angeles Mayor’s office, the California Department of Finance, and the California State Controller. GU is past President of the National Association of Business Economics, LA Chapter, and past Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council of the California Chamber of Commerce.

A pioneer of high-end urban condominium marketing, Alan P. Mark is recognized today as one of the country’s leading experts in real estate marketing and consulting. Under his guidance, The Mark Company (TMC) has shaped the living landscape of California and established itself as a premium resource for brokers, developers and financial institutions by successfully designing, marketing and selling some of the most prestigious and innovative developments of the past decade.

In the mid-1990s, as the first indications of the emerging condominium market in San Francisco became visible, Alan saw the need for an innovative, full-service, real estate marketing and sales consulting firm that could partner with visionary developers to bring community-shaping projects to market with integrity, creativity and sound research. Built on the four pillars of research, product design, marketing and sales, Alan founded The Mark Company in 1997 and recruited a team of sophisticated industry experts who, like him, were driven by the desire to do it better every time.

Over the past decade, Alan has led TMC’s climb to becoming the industry’s most in demand residential sales and marketing firm, delivering unmatched results at projects in all stages of planning or distress. Its extensive portfolio includes The Brannan, the first of San Francisco’s high-profile, ultra-luxury high-rises and the catalyst for the transformation of the South Beach neighborhood; the St. Regis Residences, which set a new standard for elegance of design and market value in the heart of the city’s burgeoning South of Market Museum District; and The Infinity, New York-based Tishman Speyer’s first residential offering in the United States and the country’s fastest-selling project of 2009.

TMC opened a Los Angeles Office in fall 2007 to better meet the needs of its clients. Today, TMC has projects operating in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Marina del Rey, San Diego and Denver.

Alan built The Mark Company brand as an extension of his own stellar reputation and steadfast adherence to best practices. So thorough is the firm’s research component, that it now produces highly sought-after research reports for six regional markets. These comprehensive reports not only serve as a distinct competitive advantage for The Mark Company and its clients, but are valued reference materials for developers, financial institutions, architects, the media and other real estate trend monitors.

Alan is an in-demand speaker for leading real estate industry groups on a local and national level. He regularly participates in events sponsored by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), Downtown Center Business Improvement District (DCBID) in Los Angeles , Central City Association of Los Angeles (CCA), Pacific Coast Builders Conference (PCBC), NAIOP, the Belden Club and the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is on the Executive Committee for ULI San Francisco and is a member of Lambda Alpha International, the Honorary Society for the Advancement of Land Economics. Alan holds real estate broker licenses in California, Colorado and Washington.

Prior to founding The Mark Company, Alan served as the Marketing Director for Pacific Union Marketing Company, where he oversaw marketing and sales efforts. Alan also spent several years at The New York Times and Wall Street Journal before entering the real estate development field.

Alan received his Bachelor of Science degree from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York and his Masters in Business Administration from the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Amy Price is a Managing Director of Morgan Stanley and co-Head of real estate investing on the West Coast. She is responsible for the sourcing and execution of real estate investments in California, Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest and Arizona

Amy initially joined Morgan Stanley in 1993 and has since worked in the New York, Hong Kong and San Francisco offices. Since 1998, she has been focused exclusively on pursuing new investment opportunities for the real estate investing business

Amy received her MBA with Distinction from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated magna cum laude from Colgate University.

Ken Rosen is Chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business at UC, Berkeley from 1978 through 2004, teaching graduate courses in real estate finance and economics, and investment analysis. Dr. Rosen was named California State Chair of Real Estate and Urban Economics in 1986, a title he held until he left teaching. He has authored over 100 articles and four books on real estate and real estate finance.

Ken Rosen is also Chairman of Rosen Consulting Group, a real estate market research firm, and Chairman of Rosen Real Estate Securities, a REIT money manager with nearly $400 million in assets under management. Rosen Real Estate Securities has the Government of Singapore Real Estate Group and DB RREEF as minority partners. He was formerly Chairman, Founder and Portfolio Manager of Lend Lease Rosen Securities, a $3 billion REIT money management firm.

In prior business ventures, Mr. Rosen co-founded Regional Data Associates (RDA) in 1976, a leading real estate forecasting firm. RDA was sold to Chase Manhattan Bank in 1982, and became part of the Chase Econometric forecasting system. In 1985, he joined Salomon Brothers Inc. as a Consultant/Managing Director and founded the firm's Real Estate Research Department, which was recognized as Wall Street's leading real estate research group.

Mr. Rosen received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974 and a B.A. with highest honors from the University of Connecticut in 1970. He was a Professor of Economics at Princeton University from 1975 to 1979. Dr. Rosen is a trustee of the Urban Land Institute and a member of the board of directors of several non-profit and for-profit entities that deal with real estate finance and development. Since 2006 Ken is the special real estate advisor to The Davos World Economic Forum.

Larry A. Rosenthal, JD PhD serves as Executive Director of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, and Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, at UC Berkeley. He is coeditor, with John Quigley, of Risking Housing and Home: Disasters, Cities, Public Policy (Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2008), a collection of symposium papers commemorating the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Earlier he coauthored, with David Kirp and John Dwyer, Our Town: Race, Housing and the Soul of Suburbia (Rutgers University Press, 1995), an award-winning social, legal and policy narrative of the historic Mt. Laurel housing rights cases in New Jersey, and he has also written a variety of articles, book chapters, and research reports. Rosenthal's research has addressed land use and regulatory barriers, rental subsidy, housing affordability, effects of prevailing wage legislation on low-income housing development, effects of construction-defect litigation on the supply of condominium and attached housing, and the efficacy of various methodologies in estimating the homeless population.

Originally trained as an attorney, Rosenthal served as law clerk to the late Justice Marcus M. Kaufman at the Supreme Court of California and was Governor George Deukmejian's appointee to California's Dispute Resolution Advisory Council. He later was associate at the San Francisco law firm of Hanson, Bridgett et al., and acted as statistical consultant to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in its implementation of the Civil Justice Reform Act. He also served as policy analyst for the National Park Service's Presidio Transition Team, studying redeployment of the Presidio's housing stock. He has served as consultant to a variety of public and nonprofit bodies regarding housing development and related topics.

Rosenthal holds doctoral and masters degrees in public policy from UC Berkeley, a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an AB from Oberlin College.

Mr. Souza has 22 years of experience in the commercial real estate industry. Prior to establishing the Johnson Souza Group, Inc., Mr. Souza worked for Charles Schwab Investment Management (CSIM) as Managing Director - Index Services; Chief Economist – Managing Director with Global Real Analytics (GRA); Investment Advisor for Quantum Financial Network (QFN); and New York Life Insurance Company, Inc. (NYL). Mr. Souza holds a California commercial real estate brokers license. Mr. Souza provides economic insights, and investment consulting services to retail, high net worth and institutional, real estate investors, brokers, operators and suppliers. He has also held senior positions in strategic portfolio research and analysis with BRE Properties, Metric Realty Advisors, Mellon-McMahan, Norris/Beggs & Simpson and Grubb & Ellis. Mr. Souza holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in several fields including: accounting, finance and banking, applied economics, public administration, information systems and political science. He has also been teaching college level courses for the past 15 years in Real Estate, Finance and Economics at Cal. State East Bay (Hayward), Golden Gate University (GGU), San Francisco State University (SFSU), and Santa Clara University (SCU). Mr. Souza is a Counselor of Real Estate (CRE), a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS), Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM), Registered Representative and Investment Advisor, and Licenses California Insurance Agent; is a member of the American Real Estate Society (ARES), the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA), and Appraisal Institute (AI); mentor for the Robert Toigo Foundation; and has acted as an advisory board member for the Real Estate Research Institute (RERI), Bay Area Council (BAC)/University of Southern California (USC) Ross Program in Real Estate (San Francisco), Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW-SF) and Community Awareness and Treatment Services (CATs).

As Assessor-Recorder of San Francisco, Phil Ting is a solutions-focused, innovative reformer whose efforts have enabled him to generate over $245 million in new revenue for San Francisco and make sure everyone pays their fair share in property taxes.

Ting was appointed and later elected in 2005, becoming San Francisco’s highest-ranking Chinese-American official. He has focused on reducing the assessment backlog from four to two years and every dollar that his office brings in means more money for the city to fund crucial programs for children, seniors and families.

Ting is a champion for innovative and good government policies in San Francisco.

He launched GoSolarSF, San Francisco’s first municipal solar energy incentive program, in July 2008. This ten-year program is the product of the San Francisco Solar Task Force which Ting co-founded and co-chaired. He had the distinct honor of being awarded the 2008 Solar Champion Award from Vote Solar for “outstanding efforts to bring solar energy into the mainstream.”

He spearheads efforts to help homeowners and tenants facing foreclosure, including launching Don’t Borrow Trouble, an education and outreach program; convening city officials and advocates to find local solutions to the foreclosure crisis; and creating a first-of-its-kind program that sends a letter providing resource information to at-risk homeowners and tenants once a Notice of Default has been recorded for the home.

He introduced groundbreaking “Real Estate Watchdog” legislation which is aimed at capturing unreported changes of ownership. In 2008, the Assessor’s office’s first unreported change of ownership brought in $1.34 million in additional revenue.

He chairs the San Francisco Advisory Board for ChinaSF, a new public-private partnership dedicated to creating economic development opportunities by making San Francisco the gateway for Chinese companies looking to establish business operations in the Bay Area.

Ting began his career as a real estate financial advisor, gaining practical and hands-on experience in fiscal management and property assessments while working at Arthur Andersen and CB Richard Ellis. Prior to serving as the Assessor-Recorder, Ting also had a long history of civil rights advocacy - he was the Executive Director of the Asian Law Caucus, an organization founded in 1972 to advance and promote the legal and civil rights of the Asian Pacific Islander community. He is past president of the Bay Area Assessors Association and has served on the board of Equality California Institute. He currently serves on numerous boards including the California Alumni Association (Go Bears!).

Ting is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives in San Francisco's Sunset District with his wife, Susan Sun and their daughters, Isabella and Madeleine.

Dennis has been a mortgage banker with Northmarq (formerly Trowbridge, Kieselhorst) since 1988. He served as president of the Bay Area Mortgage Association (BAMA) from 1997-98, and as President of the SF Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP) in 1995 and 2002. Dennis has acted as a guest speaker at multiple presentations to the MBA, BAMA, NAIOP, ULI, U.C. Berkeley, Stanford’s MBA Program, AICPA and Northmarq. He currently lectures at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, where he has taught an MBA course, Real Estate Development, since 2004. Dennis received his MBA from Tuck at Dartmouth in 1988 and his AB from U.C. Berkeley in 1984.

Wayne Yamano is Vice President at John Burns Real Estate Consulting and manages the Research team that monitors housing markets all across the country for retainer clients, which include many of the largest companies in the real estate and investment industries. His team also publishes cutting-edge research, tackling some of the toughest issues in housing, such as quantifying and forecasting shadow inventory and distressed sales. Mr. Yamano was previously a real estate research analyst at CB Richard Ellis and in portfolio management at Banc of America Securities. He holds a BS from UCLA and an MBA from the University of Southern California.

Mr. Zerbst joined CB Richard Ellis Investors as president in 1997. From 1998 until 2007 he served as CEO and from 2007 – 2008 as Chairman. He had overall responsibility for investment policy and strategic direction of the firm. He led the growth and transformation of CB Richard Ellis Investors from a domestic pension fund advisor with $3.7 billion of assets under management to a multi-strategy, global investment organization with a portfolio of more than $42 billion. In 1981, after a career in real estate research and education, Zerbst founded and served as CEO of Piedmont Realty Advisors, a San Francisco-based real estate investment manager. In 1991 Piedmont merged with The RREEF Funds and he became a partner. While at RREEF he was responsible for all investments in the western United States and opportunistic investments nationally. He is a Director of Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR), current Chairman of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers (NAREIM) and a Board member of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF). He also serves as an independent member of the investment committees for CB Richard Ellis’ Global Multi Manager business in London and Aigis’ Euro Sustainable Property Partners in Paris. Mr. Zerbst is a member of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), Real Estate Round Table, Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Asia Society, the Policy Advisory Board of the Fisher Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Trustee of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Mr. Zerbst holds a B.A. from Miami University, an M.A. in Economics, an M.B.A. and a Ph.D in Finance and Real Estate Economics from Ohio State University.